Mathematics

Online collaborative and content-focused professional development (PD) is becoming an increasingly important setting for supporting mathematics teachers’ professional learning. The purpose of this study was to better understand the process by which a community emerges in such a PD setting by examining how the cohesiveness of 21 mathematics teachers’ social network evolves and associated shifts in the quality of mathematics teachers’ mathematical discourse.

Teachers’ knowledge of proportional reasoning is important, particularly in the middle grades in the USA. This exploratory study investigated 32 teachers’ use of knowledge resources in two mathematically similar tasks (one a paper and pencil task, the other a dynamic task) around proportional reasoning. The two tasks invoked different knowledge resources by the same teachers. Results suggest questions to the field around how we access or invoke teacher knowledge and the need to more purposefully explore the potential benefits of using a dynamic task to invoke knowledge resources.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers understand one specific aspect of proportional reasoning. We were interested in understanding the extent to which practicing teachers were able to make sense of reasoning that involved the fixed number of variable-sized parts perspective. We used two items, drawn from a larger dataset, that encouraged teachers to reason about proportional situations using a variable parts perspective.

Well-designed mathematics instruction focused on concepts and problem-solving skills associated with measurement and data analysis can build a foundational understanding for more advanced mathematics. This study investigated the efficacy of the Precision Mathematics Level 1 (PM-L1) intervention, a Tier 2 print- and technology-based mathematics intervention designed to increase first-grade students’ conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills around the areas of measurement and data analysis.